Feminism, the War Cycle, and the Draft
By Patricia Simon
(11 August 1980)
[The remarks below were delivered by Gold Star mother Patricia Simon of the Women’s Strike for Peace at the Democratic Party National Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City on 11 August 1980, following her nomination for Vice-President by a convention delegate caucus of “Democrats Against the Draft”. The convention had just renominated President Jimmy Carter for a second term. (Carter was booed when he mentioned his call for reinstatment of draft registration in his speech accepting the nomination, and went on to lose the election to Republican candidate Ronald Reagan.) After a five-year hiatus in draft registration during which the Selective Service System was placed in “deep standby” status and draft boards were disbanded, President Carter had proposed reinstating draft registration in his State of the Union address in January 1980. Congress enacted a modified version of Carter’s proposal, and draft registration resumed on 21 July 1980 — just three weeks before the Democratic Party National Convention at which the speech below was given. The tactic of nominating an anti-war candidate (especially for Vice-President rather than President) was a way to get time in the national television spotlight for nominating and seconding speeches and then a speech by the candidate declining the nomination, and had been used before to call attention to issues being ignored or played down by party leaders. Pat Simon’s address below was written in collaboration with Rev. Barry Lynn of the Office for Church in Society of the United Church of Christ, who also served as chair of the national Committe Against registration and the Draft (CARD). This article appeared in the October 1980 issue of “Peacework”, published by the New England Regional Office of the American Friends Service Committee, and was reprinted in the 1991 anthology, “Peacework: 20 Years of Nonviolent Social Change”, edited by Pat Farren with a foreword by Grace Paley.]
This [Democratic] Party in its platform opposes a peacetime draft. This is a first step. But we must be constantly vigilant so we can challenge any peacetime efforts to bring conscription back to America. There is simply too much to lose if we fail. The draft is one of the cruelest and most destructive institutions we have ever experienced in our country the draft has never been fair or just. No selective system which chooses only a few who shall be asked to kill and risk their lives will be fair. The draft would today be most harmful to those with the least access to power. Those with wealth and privilege will find the lawyers, doctors, counselors, and clergy to assist them in taking advantage of the exemptions and deferments built into any Selective Service System. Those without such access will be the ones who are drafted. No Congressman lost a son or grandson in Vietnam.
An active Selective Service System is not only unjust – it is monstrously dangerous. 16 years ago this month, with a peacetime registration and draft in place, we slid fully into the Vietnam war through the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized our deeper involvement in that war. Congress did not have to debate the very difficult question of whether to reimpose the draft to conduct that war; the draft was already in place and ready to function. I want to make it impossible to commit ourselves to war again with our eyes closed.
Proponents of the draft would have us believe that we needed for our national security, as if the two million people on active duty, and the nearly 1.2 million reservists are insufficient to protect our shores. The draft is only contemplated for wars of intervention abroad where legitimate American interests are dubious or non-existent.
If the draft itself is reinstituted, I fear the war cycle is inexorably launched once again.
At this point we have only registration for a future draft. I urge my Party and its elected officials to abandon this program before we carry it any further. Registration has not been a success. Figures from some cities show a 30% rate of noncompliance. We may have just created over half a million potential young felons in just two weeks – more than 20 times the number of people in
our Federal prison system. The nightmare of law enforcement and national divisiveness which could occur in the months ahead is frightening. In the past, our country has abandoned programs which have failed. This is the time to abandon draft registration and get on with the business of solving the real problems which face our nation.
As an activist for Democratic candidates, a past delegate to the Democratic Convention, and a woman committed to the fundamental principles of the Democratic Party, I insist that we be known as the Party of Peace. Yet I grieve that just three weeks ago the head of our Party [President Jimmy Carter] took a potentially dangerous step away from a peaceful future [by reinstituting draft registration].
My only son was killed in Vietnam. David was a young man who tried to feel patriotic, who was struggling to define his own masculinity, and who tried to believe what he heard from his government about Vietnam. In 1967 his doubts grew about the value of the cause his country had defined for him. Shipped ahead of schedule to Vietnam, he was killed three weeks later in Cu Chi – two days before his 19th birthday.
He was just the age of those young men who three weeks ago were ordered to register for a possible new draft.
When David was killed, I wanted to go to Vietnam because that was where reality was for me. I had heard about a day-care center for crippled and blind Vietnamese children who had also experienced the reality of war. Most Americans seemed completely oblivious to what their government was doing 9,000 miles away. I did not go to Vietnam, because I was dedicated to raising my daughters. But I was determined to bring the reality to America so that we could never say we would have cared if we had only known.
I have been working for the past twelve years on countering the suffering and victimization of war veterans and those who served their country by refusing to participate. The war will never be over for those who were its victims: not for the veterans on whom our military callously dropped poisonous defoliants so potent that today they cause cancers and genetic defects in unborn children; not for those who suffer the continuing scars of a military justice system which brands them for life with less-than-honorable discharges, or acts so trivial that they would not even be misdemeanors in civilian life; not for the veterans and Southeast Asians who suffer physical and psychological trauma for which full healing will never be possible.
Yet by the registration of a new generation of young men we escalate the risk of creating a new generation of veterans, a new set of devastated Gold Star families. Most people have forgotten that last September [1979] the House of Representatives defeated registration by a nearly 100-vote margin; and that the Defense Department and the Selective Service System had completed a report to Congress in January [1980] advising against registration, and had to re-write the report to support the president’s call for registration in his State of the Union message.
The war cycle may have begun again when, in a nuclear age, it should be unthinkable.
The draft is a menacing mechanism to hold over our children, a system which gives the state the God-like power to seize children from their parents and force them to serve according to their leaders’ economic and political goals. The draft is the all-to-perfect example of the subordination of the individual conscience to domination by the state
I feel that the war cycle in which we live will be broken by nuclear holocaust… or through the leadership of women!
Until recently, “mankind’s” understandings have been the only understandings generally available to us – by virtue of its subordination of women. Qualities traditionally associated with women have been considered weaknesses. These qualities – nurturance, cooperation, helping others to grow – are, in fact, essential to human development and survival, but have been excluded from leadership and decision-making in the public sphere. Feminist perspective, affirming that which has been called “feminine” and is the more humane in both sexes, can radically change the character of institutions, economic priorities, and international negotiations. This is my hope for the future.
But right now we must remember that preparing for war creates war. The use of violence is an acknowledgment of impotence, and war (organized violence) is collective impotence disguised as strength.
I appreciate the nomination of my Party and the opportunity to appeal to my fellow Democrats to repudiate [draft] registration, to consider it a mistake. I withdrawn my candidacy for the Vice-Presidency.
This page published or republished here 1 August 1980; most recently modified 25 December 2023. This site is maintained by
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